school photos 30

In her nightmare Janine was haunted, as usual, by the coppery smell of fresh blood. Her hand was framed on their front-door panel, but she didn’t have to push it open. She was safe as long as he stayed one side of the closed door; she the other. Yet she was aware that on the other side of the threshold her mother’s pleading voice could no longer be heard. The traffic outside no longer worked its way up the stairs. The shocks and spills of tenement life had become mute. Her ragged breathing was the only sign of life. Dad had crept up the hallway. His ear was flattened against the other side of the door—listening. Pee gushed down her legs.

            She woke with a jump-start and flung herself out of the snuggly warmth of the hospital bed. Yanking her knickers down and crouching over the waste-paper bucket urine sprayed blackened douts, a Daily Record and Malterser wrappers, pooling in fag packets and collecting in the grime, finding a pinhole and seeping out and onto the dull linoleum by her bed. Crinkling her nose at the smell and the mess she reached for her Silk Cut packet, close at hand, lying on the chair beside her bed. Her breathe caught in her throat as she picked it up and shook it, thinking the unimaginable that the twenty carton was empty, but there was one left. A life saver. The only way to start the day.  All she needed was a light.

            Sitting alone at a breakfast table, her  cushioned seat pushed back against the wooden panel frame, with nothing but a cup of strong black tea she enjoyed the solidity of cigarette smoke around her face. Most of the regulars had already been served, a few tables cleared and stacked away. Lulu’s old Number 1 hit Shout was a screeching background noise on the tranny behind the serving hatch.   John sat a few seats across from her, elbow crooked, protecting a plate with sausage, ham, egg and fried bread.  An empty cereal bowl had been pushed arm’s reach along the table to make room. The matching ceramic white cup handle was positioned closer for swiping up and quaffing hot tea after a few mouthfuls of grease. His eyes darted sideways towards her and just as quickly away, but the more he peeked the slower he chewed. Mopping up his plate with fried bread he finished eating. The back of the chair legs screeched across the tiled floor. Standing, slightly bow-legged, like a man that had just farted,  his hand perched on the top bar of the chair in the row behind him, he allowed himself to notice her and to smile a lopsided grin.        

            ‘Ah hope we can still be friends.’

            Her cup rattled, leaving the red stain of her lipstick below the rim, as she placed it down on a plate. The mouthful of tea that she had been sipping was cold, but her voice was warm and upbeat. ‘Guys only ever say that when they want to screw you or dump you. Sometimes both.’ She raised one plucked eyebrow and shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘Which is it?’

            He laughed, nervous of the nurse behind the hatch and an older patient, a balding man, staring over at them. His cheeks flamed and sweat began to seep out of his pores and run down his face. ‘Ah’d just like to be friends.’ His knee knocked against the chair closest to him and he lunged past it for the door.

Janine turned her head, watching through the glass partitions as he scuttled along the corridor. She dabbed carefully at the corner of her mouth with a paper napkin, her eyes watering as she giggled. A dull morning looked more promising.

She stayed in her room, avoided meeting him again until she was properly dressed. She stood at the entrance to the dayroom waiting for him to notice her. Long fingers were jammed inside the side-pockets of her oversized checked-mohair coat. A Cossack hat flattening her head. But he seemed to have acquired a pad and a biro and was either writing or drawing. Eventually, when he did look over, she nonchalantly waved goodbye to him. Her eyes remained on her matronly sensible shoes as she trudged as slowly as possible towards the nurses’ office. Picking at the flaked pink polish on her thumbnail with her index finger she read the fire regulations on the wall ten yards from it with a fierce concentration.

‘Where you aff tae?’ John stood a step behind her, his body weight on the back heel for a quick getaway.     

‘I was just going to get some air.’ A smile brightened her face.

‘That’s nice.’

She slipped her arm through his, looking up at him. ‘Why don’t you come?’

‘Aye, I’d love to.’ He tugged his arm half-heartedly away, but a grin was on his face.

She wrenched him in close to her body. ‘I’m serious.’

‘Ah think we’ve been through this wan before.’ He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

She plucked at his arm until he was looking at her. ‘I can get you out of here.’

‘How?’ He looked up and down the corridor, to see if anybody was watching them, but apart from a few patients hanging about nobody showed interest in them. The nurses were ensconced in their office near the entrance and exit to the ward, with the door shut.  

‘I’ll make you invisible.’

He snorted. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

Her hand was held up in front of his face, her fingers making childish twinkling movements. ‘I can, you know. Make you invisible. Get you out of here.’

‘Whit are you? Ah witch or something?’

‘Wicked witch of the north,’ she cackled.

The two of them were bent over laughing, one arm on each other for support. She was first to pull away, straightening up her coat, but still clutching his wrist. She whispered ‘just promise to do exactly what I tell you’.

‘Ok.’ His face played it as a joke, but he sounded half-serious.

‘Right.’ She spoke more business-like, slapping his two arms so that he stood up straighter and inspecting the shine on his Doc Martin boots. ‘Follow me. And remember, don’t hesitate. Do exactly what I say. When we get to the exit and they open the door for me to leave, I’ll give you the nod, and I want you to kiss me as if your life depended on it.’

‘That shouldn’t be too hard.’ He fell into step behind her.